Spirit of Inquiry

This is the map of the roads around my home.

In spite of the road blocks in place, people drive or ride their vehicles up to the point marked X. Then they think that they can take the road to the right to reach another road. The workers and other people on the road tell these riders/drivers that this is a "dead end road", to no avail. People go to the end of the road, see that there is no way out and then turn around with great difficulty and then go back. This has been happening for days now.

It amazes me that people want to find out the truth for themselves.

I also wish that they display the same spirit of inquiry to other matters. Apparently many do not.

Recently in a newspaper published readers' questions and the answers given by dual Sri Ravi Shankar. 

The Question: Why do we get angry.

2XSri RS: Because we are perfectionists and we get angry when we do not get perfection in actions. Actions can never be 100% perfect. They can only be 95% perfect. 100% perfection can be achieved in only thought and speech.

I have tried to reproduce the above Q&A as accurately as possible. I tried to get the original but failed. 

My wish is that the readers ask some simple questions of themselves.

• What is the measure of this perfection?
• Why is only 95% perfection is possible. Is 2XSri grabbing the number out of thin air as another guru used to grab branded watches out of the same source? Or is there a basis for that number?
• What IS perfection in speech? And thought?
• How does one measure it? 
• Have we ever encountered an instance of perfect speech or perfect thought?
• Is that the only or even the true cause of our anger?
• Does the above theory help one overcome anger?

I wish the readers of his Q&A exhibit the same spirit of inquiry that many exhibit with the blocked road and the dead end road!

Prabal Mallick's Solo Exhibition

I just returned from an exhibition of watercolours by Prabal Mallick at CKP - (Chitrakala Parishat) 

I love good watercolours and Prabal's are lovely. Each of his works is  all that a good watercolour should be.

Here are some pictures from the exhibition with Prabal.

Here are more works by Prabal for you to see:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4UpsdHM9aA
http://penciljammers.com/profile/PrabalMallick
http://www.facebook.com/prabal.mallick?sk=photos
http://micheal-learns-to-paint.blogspot.com/
http://community.how-to-draw-and-paint.com/profile/PrabalMallick
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/prabal-mallick.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51743818@N02/

A Self_Confessed Atheist

A friend and I arrived after a 5 km long drive. We were of course talking on the way and he ended up with "You atheists put a lot of pressure on us theists". What? I told him, "On the way just now, we saw at least 10 hoardings which tried to sell you god, various brands of religions and spirituality and so on. Did you find one board trying to sell atheism? Who is putting pressure on whom?".


"But there is invisible pressure." He said. I had to retort, "You theists are used to believing in invisible, non-existent things anyway. So your accusation does not mean anything."


Even though this may sound acrimonious, it was not. All in good humour. So it was fun.


Today Ravi sent me this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14135523


Very funny, very interesting.


The sentence that caught my attention was the one that starts with "A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says....". Self-confessed? Being an atheist is no crime to confess to, surely. Self-proclaimed, self-declared will do nicely, thank you! 


You think that I am being over sensitive about this? Not at all. It is a point of diction. As Richard Dawkins says, the feminists raised our consciousness by objecting to sex bias by objecting to words like chairman, workman (and even HIStory) and so on. This is also like that. I would want to rewrite that sentence referred to earlier as: Mr Alm, an atheist, says ....


To prove a point to myself I asked a colleague if she was a self-confessed Roman Catholic. She looked at me with incredulity. QED


Now, who puts pressure on who, please?


What do you say?